uppose an Indian hunter, who had never seen one of our civilized
world, or heard of our costume, coming suddenly upon them, their faces
being turned from him. Would it be possible for him to imagine what
kind of animals they were? We think not; and least of all, that he
would suppose them to be of his own species. This is no improbable
case; and we very much fear, should it ever occur, that the unrefined
savage would go home with an impression not very flattering either to
the milliner or the tailor.

That, under such disguises, we should consider human beauty as a kind
of enigma, or a thing to dispute about, is not surprising; nor even
that we should often differ from ourselves, when so much of the
outward man is thus made to depend on the shifting humors of some
paramount Petronius of the shears. But, admitting it to be an easy
matter to divest the form, or, what is still more important, our
own minds, of every thing conventional, there is the still greater
obstacle to any true effect from the person alone, in that moral
admixture, already mentioned, which, more or less, must color the
most of our impressions from every individual. Is there not, then,
sufficient ground for at least a doubt if, excepting idiots, there is
one human being in whom the purely physical is _at all times_ the
sole agent? We do not say that it does not generally predominate. But,
in a compound being like man, it seems next to impossible that the
nature within should not at times, in some degree, transpire through
the most rigid texture of the outward form. We may not, indeed, always
read aright the character thus obscurely indexed, or even be able to
guess at it, one way or the other; still, it will affect us; nay, most
so, perhaps, when most indefinite. Every man is, to a certain extent,
a physiognomist: we do not mean, according to the common acceptation,
that he is an interpreter of lines and quantities, which may be
reduced to rules; but that he is born one, judging, not by any
conscious rule, but by an instinct, which he can neither explain nor
comprehend, and which compels him to sit in judgment, whether he will
or no. How else can we account for those instantaneous sympathies and
antipathies towards an utter stranger?

Now this moral influence has a twofold source, one in the object,
and another in ourselves; nor is it easy to determine which is the
stronger as a counteracting force. Hitherto we have considered only
the former; we now